No, this was the limit. It had been three years since the first attempt to bring this blue maniac to the Game Gear. From the beginning it was clear that to imitate the older brothers wasn't just technically unfeasible, but also foolish. Imitation is a losing battle. Self-innovation is another story.

Triple Trouble compartmentalized all that had been learned and fought for in the last three years, and blows them all up to the extreme that the Game Gear could handle. You can tell. The performance of the game is a sign of that, but the reward is tasty. Levels were no longer 40-50 seconds, but now 4-5 minutes. Levels were now beginning to square up to the ambition and scope that had bejeweled the home-console Sonic releases. But this game wasn't just Sonic 3, it was its own work of art. It had even innovated on the Sonic formula in ways that the home console games weren't doing. The Special Stages in Triple Trouble are the most impressive the series had seen up to that point.

They finally had cracked the code. It is still a Game Gear game, but it is the Game Gear game that Sonic fans and SEGA were waiting three great years for. It's these three years that set the stage for most future handheld Sonic releases. In 1994, a dream came true.

Probably the best game in the 8bit Sonic line-up, which isn't as impressive as it sounds.

Movement is fine, music is good, animations are cute. Nothing outstanding though, and there isn't really a reason to play these 8bit entries when the best games in the series are very easily accessible nowadays.

Now, wouldn't it be funny if this game got a legendary 16-bit fan remake. Imagine that.

[played on 2DS via the Virtual Console]

I replayed this one a few days ago, so I suppose I could write something about it!


It's pretty obvious that the 8-bit Sonic games released for the Game Gear and Master System didn't have much of a chance of matching their 16-bit counterparts, but Triple Trouble ends up coming pretty close in a few areas!

The zones are creatively themed and have fun gimmicks, the sprites are honestly fantastic for the hardware, there's attempts at setpieces and level transitions akin to what S3&K achieved, the soundtrack's quite decent, and it introduced a new character in the form of Fang! (And considering he finally made his first proper mainline appearance in last year's Sonic Superstars, that's probably the biggest impact this game's left on the series)

It's undeniably rough in areas and doesn't always hit the mark, but for the most part, I always have fun revisiting Triple Trouble! And after the fantastic 16-bit remake by Noah Copeland and his team, I've come to appreciate this little Game Gear title even more for the bold ambitions it had.

People still play the GG versions of these games? You are aware there exists patches to convert them to Master System games and remove screen crunch, right?

Either way, this is a really fun game! Definitely very vanilla in the same vain as Sonic Chaos, but a definite step-up, I just don't have as much nostalgia for this one and am thus rating it honestly.

This is the second best of the 8-bit sonic games in my opinion, it's undeniably a fun time!

A very interesting and short sonic game in my opinion and I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did. It was very cathartic seeing mechanics from this game appear in sonic mania like the train chase sequence from sunset park being the end of sonics act 1 mirage saloon , the bubble mechanic in hydro city zone, and fang in the heavy magician boss fight. My biggest issue with this game is that while it had great ideas it doesn’t allow them to be utilized long enough to be memorable . I feel like if it had 3 more zones and was created with enough polish as a mainline classic game it would be timeless

Played as part of the Sonic Gems collection for the Nintendo GameCube.

I can feel the Game Gear's hold on me loosening, which means it's almost time to get back to playing Sonic games I enjoy. Before I do, though, I need to talk about Sonic Triple Trouble, arguably the best Sonic game on the handheld. I think I might like the quaintness of the original Sonic the Hedgehog a little bit more, but that game doesn't have Fang the Sniper Nack the Weasel, so I can see why everyone gravitates towards this one.

Remember in the Archie comics how Nack had a sister named Nicolette - you know, like to play on "nick-nack" - who was basically just Nack with curves? What a stupid comic. I hope it was one of the designs Ken Penders took Archie to court over and that judge had to look at a picture of Nicollete and just like, mentally process it.

They could've left it at Nack and simply had him serve as Sonic's main rival, but Sega clearly wanted to go big with Triple Trouble, so Knuckles is here, too. Once again he's triggering traps, punting Sonic from zone to zone, and laughing his smug head off the whole time. Dude loves being a heel. It's obvious the intent here was to approach Triple Trouble as the Game Gear equivalent of Sonic the Hedgehog 3, though much of the smoothness and spectacle of that game gets caught in the filter. Zones are bigger and more complex than previous Game Gear Sonic games, and level gimmicks feel much more organic, but familiar issues like slowdown and screen crunch really drag the whole experience down. I must sound like a broken record at this point, but the key metric by which I seem to be judging all of these games is how much screen crunch affects the flow of gameplay. Though the severity varies between each title, it's an undeniable issue in all of them.

Triple Trouble is definitely a case where ambition clashes against limitations, and though the end result is a game that's pretty good for what it is, it suffers in ways that are difficult to ignore. I think that's what made Triple Trouble the perfect candidate for a 16-bit remake. Being modeled after Sonic the Hedgehog 3 allowed the remake to feel like a spiritual and mechanical successor to that game, but those qualities are baked into the original and are only encumbered by the hardware.

While it may only be a high note because of the impressively low bar set by the Game Gear's dire software library, it's absolutely the one Sonic should've gone out on. Unfortunately, it was not, which means I have to suffer through Sonic Blast in the very near future.

Sonic Triple Trouble is much like Sonic Chaos before it, but the steps taken to alleviate the easy nature of Chaos is to add occasional 'gotchas' from off-screen enemies and blind leaps of faith across the tiny Game Gear screen. The game is laughably easy again despite this apart from inconsistent momentum and frequent framerate drops, but going for all emeralds turns it into a treasure hunt for rings again but this time constantly spited by points of no return. Honestly I would add the caveat to my ratings that both Sonic Chaos and Triple Trouble are closer to 3★ or 3.5★ if ignoring Emeralds but drop to 1★ or 1.5★ when you go for the good endings. The Sonic GameGear games go from "Fine" at best to outright "Bad" when you go for the Emeralds.

For the Game Gear, this is an impressive title. As it was made for the Game Gear specifically, and not ported from the Master System, it utilises the Game Gear’s screen estate properly, the sprites are smaller and you can see more of the screen, leading to far fewer issues of jumping into the unknown.

As the actual game is concerned, there really isn’t a lot to talk about. It’s a decent Sonic platformer but doesn’t really have anything special about it, nor does it really have any glaring flaws. If you want to play a Sonic platformer and haven’t played Triple Trouble before, then I’d say it’s worth it, as it’s still a fun title, but I can’t see myself wanting a second playthrough.

There are a few fun set pieces, I did like the train boss, which was probably the most unique part of Triple Trouble, and the gameplay and graphics feel better than what you would expect from a Game Gear.

This is absolutely the best of these handheld Sonic games, in a way that very much impressed me. The art design and presentation is top notch for a system like this, with impressive animations and cutscenes, and the set pieces on certain levels (such as the train segment in Sunset Park Zone) demonstrate a mastery of development on this hardware that the previous games did not. The level design may not be outstanding, but the unique and varied special stages were a pleasant surprise. It still struggles with framerate issues and screen crunch, but overall this is a truly great game, especially for the hardware.